As we walked to the right of the frame above, towards the timber, we came across what was left of a 10 point buck  after it a coyote attack.

The coyotes have been encroaching the cabin and barn along the trails at night.  Mostly we ignore each other, and if I have a dead animal or bird, I’ll leave it as a peace-offering  along their hunting routes in the back habitat.  Coyote hunters will often send their hunting dogs out in January, just before mating season, to help thin the population.  The last hunter through made the mistake of not stopping and asking permission before he turned his dogs out on Two Mile.  They were hot on the trail of a coyote when they smelled the chickens in the pasture and turned and came into the farm-yard.  I managed to collar one of the dogs and hold it until its owner drove sheepishly down the driveway.  He got my best “next time be a gentleman and ask before you trespass” lecture.  Small Farm Life does have a code of honor.

In the city, it’s hard to appreciate why we have concerns about coyotes. In cattle country, during calving season, coyotes do occasionally go after newborns and separate them from the herd.  Small colts are not immune, and coyotes are clever and skilled predators.

The first clue of the coyote kill was finding this leg, followed by the hair clumps, and then the remains of the carcass, with the rack still on the skull.

Of course, my sidekicks immediately wanted to take control, and were begging me to surround the area with crime scene tape.  I told them we could Google it, but I was certain they don’t sell DOG LINE – DO NOT CROSS crime scene tape.

A deer of this size may have died from other causes.  It was far from the road, so I don’t think it was hit by a car or truck.  And a deer like this would not be abandoned by human hunter. So while the coyotes may have just stumbled on the carrion, I think this was a kill of their own doing.  While we wait for CSI- Two Mile Ranch, I’ll share this photo of the two detectives on the case.

Not quite Horatio and Calleigh from CSI. More like Starsky and Hutch

Yes, it was all written here at Two Mile Ranch.

Sophie's Choice: my entry in the parade

Every year, I celebrate a cleansing holiday:  Sophie’s Choice day.  And while I would love to say it comes from recognition of the powerful literary and film portrayal of a horrible period in world history, it does not.  If you know the movie, you know Sophie has to make a choice.  I wont tell the rest of the tale, no spoiler alert needed.

So why is it a holiday?  In the cities and ‘burbs, usually there is one day a year designated as “throw anything away” day, where homeowners go into their basements, attics, and garages and drag out half working exercise equipment, old sofas, plant stand, broken lights, and boxes of unknown trash – er – treasure…..because typically once these things hit the curbs, a steady parade of pickers and pick up trucks circles the neighborhoods in search of items to re sell at garage sales or perhaps use in their own homes.

We don’t have trash pick up at Two Mile — the landfill is just down the road — so the big items have piled up next to the Andrew barn, along with the construction waste and the burn barrel.  As I’ve cleared brush, I’ve also found treasures like a for sale sign from at least 2 sales ago, a long metal cable (glad I didn’t hit it with the mower) and scraps of wire fencing.

Off to the landfill I went early one morning before heading into town.

And what does this have to do with Sophie’s Choice.  During clean up day, my inspiration was Sophie from the movie.  I would pick up two items, and make a choice, one could stay, the other went to the trash.  I’ve never managed to pare down to just 100 things, but after cleaning out, it gets tempting to try.

I have a few remaining for sale, contact me if interested, local pick up only, I’m not set up to ship them. fritz.nordengren AT smallfarmlife.com.

From the deck tonight

With Facebook, the dating ritual changed to be “Facebook Official”.

But Facebook is so last decade, the hot new trend in social media is Pinterest…..so as a howdy to all who have pinned images from Small Farm Life, thank you and I’m thrilled we’ve shared inspiration.  I guess we’re “pinned”.

http://pinterest.com/source/smallfarmlife.com/

I need to take care of a little business

UPDATE:  This year’s chickens, turkeys and ducks are SOLD OUT for the season.

This year’s turkeys will be a selection of Blue Slate, Black Spanish, Bourbon Reds, Narragansett, and Royal Palms. These will be processed at state inspected facility and available about November 20.

Air Chilled

The turkeys will be air chilled — not cooled in a water bath — these will be outstanding turkeys this year, unlike any store-bought Thanksgiving you have tasted.

Your reservation lets me know how many birds to plan for and who is interested. An order secures your delivery date and quantity. Final prices are based on dressed weight. I’ll try to guide nature and come as close to your desired weight as possible, but this is natural growing process, not factory controlled.

About our growing season

I’m not a commercial grower, I don’t have stock year around, but instead, raise a small number of birds each year and let their pasture and pens “rest” during the balance of the year. This helps keep diseases in check and gives their foraging pasture time to recover.

Chickens

The chickens are a Freedom Ranger chicken from French breeding stock, originally bred for France’s Label Rouge qualities. These chickens grow well, have nice white meat and dark meat to please all. A few each year top 7 pounds and a few finish closer to 3.5. If you have a preference, let me know

Raised free-range, in closed pen at night to protect from predation, birds fed supplemental feed from all plant (non animal) sources

Reservations accepted Beginning January 1, 2011
Delivery: October – November 2011
Payment (Balance due on delivery)
Sold Fresh (pick up only) or frozen (limited delivery area and times)

Chicken : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : $3.00 per pound (Approximately 5 pounds each) (some smaller, some larger)

At the request of some customers, I am sizing a few more birds this year in the 3 – 3..5 pound range, it’s the same great chicken, just less of it.

Turkeys

These are heritage breed birds, not the hybridized, broad-breasted sold in the grocery store. Typically these are Royal Palm, Narragansett, and Bourbon Red breed. Hens run smaller, toms dress under 20 pounds.

Raised free-range, in closed pen at night to protect from predation, birds fed supplemental feed from all plant (non animal) sources

Reservations accepted Beginning January 1, 2011
Delivery: November (Thanksgiving week) or December 20, 2011
Payment (Half due in June, balance due on delivery)
Sold Fresh (pick up only) or frozen (limited delivery area and times)

Turkey : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : $4.00 per pound (Approximately 9 – 20 pounds each)

Available:
November 20
December 20

Ducks — contact me

These are Pekin (white feathered) ducks, raised for meat. This duck cleans easily and presents well if serving whole. Necks removed unless requested otherwise

Raised free-range, typically spend most of day on two ponds during day and in closed pen at night to protect from predation, birds fed supplemental feed.

Reservations accepted Beginning January 1, 2011
Delivery: November (Thanksgiving week) or December 20, 2011
Payment (Half due in June, balance due on delivery)
Sold Fresh (pick up only) or frozen (limited delivery area and times)

Duck : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : $4.00 per pound (Approximately 5 pounds each)

Available:

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I met Shanen Ebersole early in 2005 when she stopped by to talk about the sagging fence line that marked the east end of Two Mile from the land she and her husband Beau rented for part of their cattle ranch.  It turned out to be the neighbor’s fence to the north and since then, we’ve shared ideas and brainstormed a few businesses and grants, and bounced Facebook status updates over the years.  She and Beau market their grass feed beef from “Ebersole Cattle Company” (Facebook page) and it’s about the only beef I buy or eat.  Naturally when it came time to think about the 2012 St. Patrick’s Day Corned Beef, a quick ping on Shanen’s Facebook page resulted in her dropping a nice brisket off in my fridge.

Back in the day before wide-spread refrigeration, the butcher or the garde manger (chef de garde manger) was responsible for keeping and preserving food.  Charcuterie is the keeping and preserving of meats , often salted or preserved in brine and that is where corned beef gets its origin.  While not originally Irish, it’s become associated with St. Patrick’s day in the US.  I’ve heard that the traditional Irish St Patrick’s meal is bacon and cabbage and perhaps that corned beef was cheaper than bacon for early Irish immigrants.  Like many foods, there is a social, political, cultural and economic heritage to what we eat.

“Corning” meat

Before the 1900′s salting was done with salt and saltpeter, but with the discovery of sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate, the results are more predictable. “Corning” beef gets its name from the British term for treating meat with “corns” of salt. A traditional corned beef is soaked in a brine of spices, salt and a curing salt mix called “prague powder” or “insta cure #1″ which is a mix of 94% sodium chloride and 6 % sodium nitrite.  Dry sausages are preserved with a different salt mix using sodium nitrate.

The recipe I work from comes from John Kowalski of the Culinary Institute of America and he shared it here.  You may also want to buy his book The Art of Charcuterie.  Essentially, the recipe includes mixing a brine of salt, sugar, pickling spice, garlic and  insta cure #1.  Be sure to carefully measure all the ingredients in the correct ratio.  Using too much can burn the meat and give it a metallic flavor, and in high amounts, it can make you sick or be fatal.

The brine is first heated to a boil, then cooled before the meat is submerged in the brine.  I can remember my father making this a traditional way, with the beef submerged in a large crock in the basement.  I opt for a more modern approach, sealed in a freezer bag and kept in the refrigerator.

Pickling spices look  something like the dried leaves and twigs headed for the compost pile after being hit by the mower.  The smell and flavor make this dish.  Pickling spices are a mix of bay leaves, coves, cinnamon, cardamom (cardamon), coriander, ginger mustard seeds and or peppercorns.  You can buy it off the shelf or make your own.

After it’s all put together, let the meat sit in the brine.  Depending on your recipe and tradition, let this soak for as little as 3 days, others as long as 2 -3 weeks or more. (A long chemistry discussion here about nitrate to nitrite conversion as a result of bacteria as well as the role of iron in the meat can be saved for another day.)  Below is the brisket before it went into the brine.  A full brisket has two sections, the point half and the flat half.  If you want to inspire your inner butcher,  see the virtual brisket here.

This year's catalogs

Along side the peppers, potatoes, snap peas, cucumbers and melons will be trial sections of a few varieties of dried beans, and some quinoa and wheat.  This first year I’m looking for very small quantities to get a feel for the growing and cultivation, and later, harvest, storage, and flavor in cooking.  Next year will include more test plots and also plots of this year’s successes on a scale to provide a self-sustaining pantry.

The costs of growing small quantities of shelf staples like these may seem high compared to buying a bulk bag at the local grocery or big box store.  In fact, the economics of gardening in general are the subject of both humorous and serious debate, for example the story on NPR from 2006 about William Alexander’s The $64 Tomato

The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

Beyond my personal garden, there is a larger curiosity to my planting this year. Let me tell you why.

When I leave the farm and do my big-city job at the university –  this is where I  put on my “good boots” and make sure the truck is washed — there is a real need for these kinds of gardens.

In my public health, food policy, and education work, we look at the food system.  The food system is everything from the initial beginnings (seeds or new animals) through the growing, harvesting, processing, storage, distribution and waste management connected with food and eating.  This includes energy, carbon use, soil and water conservation.

What we used to think of only as “hunger” has a broader term called “food insecurity” and it essentially includes not only people who can not eat today, but who are unsure if they will have a reliable source of food in the future.  The policy folks at the USDA report during 2010 about 14 percent of us were food insecure during some part of the year.

Some of that food insecurity is the result of living in “food desert” another fancy, policy-wonkish phase.  But a food desert is an area with limited or difficult access to a large supermarket or grocery store.  You can read more about one official definition here.

So if you can’t get to a supermarket, and you don’t have a household supply of food, one solution is grow your own.  And what the Two Mile Ranch garden will help me share with you is the time, space, and materials necessary to grow some shelf stable basics.

Gene Logsdson, in his book Small-Scale Grain Raising, Second Edition: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmersshares  specific ideas, planting, yield, and other information to look at small-scale grain and bean growing.  In one example, he highlights that 1/4 acre can produce 9 bushels of mixed grains.

And while a 1/4 acre (100 foot by 100) foot garden may be out of the question, for some families, community gardens and other innovative space use in both urban and rural areas open the door for gardens that may help fill in the gaps of a personal food system.

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) - Neglected and Underutilized species (Creative Commons photo by Bioversity International via Flickr)